Magento as a Supply Chain Application

Here are some random thoughts I’ve had about turning Magento into a Supply Chain application. The way I see it, Magento is only a few steps from being a supply chain application. With the addition of Inventory management, Purchasing and a handful of other modules, Magento would have all the flexibility needed to run a small business.

Look at it from this standpoint… as a Point of Sale system, you could use the Sales Order Entry system on the back-end to allow your checkout clerks to enter orders. That could be enhanced by interacting with a bar code scanner, however since there are USB scanners already available, a simple AJAX script would get the scanned numbers to enter products.

Another consideration is Magento’s lack of multiple payments on a single sales order. If you’ve ever worked retail, you know this comes up. A customer might ask to pay $50 cash and put the rest on his credit card… or split the purchase between two credit cards.

Purchasing would allow admins to write purchase orders and manage the receipt of goods. Come to think of it, this might be a feature best left to QuickBooks or similar (for small business).

Inventory management is a must. Multiple warehouses, store inventory, purchased inventory, received inventory. Going a step further, adding warehouse management to track inventory locations would make this system even better.